by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

If you ever needed a swift smack upside the head to convince you to finally stop smoking once and for all, you’d think that a heart attack would do it.

Hospitalized survivors, shocked and traumatized, are already lying there in the cardiac ward unable to light up, and certainly prohibited from smoking anywhere inside the hospital buildings. In my town, smoking is banned on all hospital grounds, thus requiring a long walk clear across the street to huddle near the bus stop – if the patient is mobile enough – with the attractive hospital gown flapping in the wind behind. These smokers are already well underway, whether they’d planned it or not, to quitting cold turkey. So why are they starting up again by the time they get home?

What many non-smokers may not understand about this question is that smokers generally LOVE their smokes. They love the longstanding associations between a cigarette and their daily routines. They love that first early morning cigarette. Or coffee breaks with workmates. On the phone. At parties. That last smoke of the day out on a quiet porch.

Smokers on the cardiac ward already know that smoking is likely what landed them in that cardiac ward in the first place. Just in case, here’s why smoking is so damaging to the heart: Continue reading “Why are heart patients who smoke leaving hospital still smoking?” →